For thousands of years, humans have never stopped exploring the universe, and technological advances have made new possibilities for exploring the universe. "Hunting" exoplanets is a very difficult task. Compared with their host stars, exoplanets not only cannot generate heat, but are also too small.It's like looking for a firefly flying under a searchlight thousands of miles away.
However, as artificial intelligence developed, machine learning technology emerged. Domestic technology companies are busy using machine learning to create recommendation algorithms that keep us scrolling through our phones. However, several major American technology giants have begun using machine learning to target outer space, hoping to help astrophysicists locate these "fireflies" faster.
In the past, astrophysicists searched for exoplanets mainly through manual and automated software analysis of large amounts of data from NASA's Kepler project. Kepler observed about 200,000 stars for four years, taking a picture every 30 minutes and accumulating about 14 billion data points.
These data points can form about 2 quadrillion possible planetary orbits. To find a planet in such a huge database, even the most powerful computers will take a lot of time. The emergence of machine learning will effectively shorten this time and make research more efficient.
Caption: When an orbiting planet blocks some of the light, the measured brightness of a star will decrease slightly. The Kepler Space Telescope observed the brightness of 200,000 stars and spent four years looking for the characteristic signal caused by a planet passing through the sky.
This time TensorFlow has done a great job again!
Discovering Asteroids with TensorFlow!
Not long ago, Chris Shallue, a Google AI researcher who is passionate about space exploration, and Andrew Vanderburg, an astrophysicist at UT Austin (University of Texas at Austin),Through the TensorFlow model, two new planets, 80g and 90i, were successfully discovered in the Kepler-90 galaxy, 2,545 light-years away from Earth.
Among them, Kepler 90i is the 8th planet of the Kepler 90 star, which also makes the Kepler 90 system the first known system with 8 planets after the solar system. Does this also imply that we are one step closer to finding the next Earth?
In order to improve the accuracy of the TensorFlow model in identifying planets and avoid mistaking other objects such as starspots and binary stars for planets, scientists and engineers used more than 15,000 data sets labeled with Kepler signals to train the model. Subsequent results also proved that the accuracy of machine learning exceeded 90%, and it is feasible to use it to explore the universe and discover new celestial bodies.
Kepler-90 is the first known 8-star system outside of our solar system where the planets orbit much closer to their star (note that the sizes and distances of the planets are not proportional). Kepler-90i orbits its star every 14 days, which means you get a birthday every two weeks. Also, this planet is 30 % larger than Earth and has a surface temperature of over 400℃, which is not a good place to go on vacation.
Is space the next target for tech giants?
If you think that searching for exoplanets is too far away for you, then Elon Musk's SpaceX space travel plan should pique your interest. It is said that it will be able to send people to space as early as this year.
Since Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully completed rocket recovery technology, more and more people have become aware of the possibility of space travel. Among them, Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon), is likely to become a strong competitor to SpaceX.
Last Sunday, Blue Origin successfully completed the eighth flight test of its New Shepard rocket, which is designed to take tourists to suborbital orbits to the edge of space. In addition, the company will also launch the New Glenn rocket launch system for satellite launches and space transportation, making it a direct competitor to SpaceX.
You should know that SpaceX's Dragon Spacecraft is currently the only supply spacecraft that can travel to and from the Earth's space station. It can also be said to be NASA's contracted courier company. It has previously undertaken 14 commercial supply and cargo return missions to the space station, and has almost a monopoly in the field of space transportation.
The Dragon Spacecraft is also likely to be SpaceX's future manned space travel vehicle. According to the agreement reached with NASA, SpaceX is now improving the Dragon Spacecraft and is expected to complete a manned test flight this year. If all this can be completed smoothly, then space travel will no longer be an empty talk, and then Elon Musk should focus on the Mars landing plan.
According to Elon Musk's ultimate vision - to allow more ordinary people to travel to space at a lower price, I hope that all this can be realized in my lifetime. However, I think that most people don't even want to consume Elon Musk's Tesla, so how can they expect to travel to space with him?
We, the young and naive proletariat, can only pin our hopes on Lei Jun. We hope that after Lei Jun takes Xiaomi public, he can catch up with the American giants and figure out how to go to space.In due course, the "first flight of young people into space" will be launched. It would be best if the Xiaomi rocket can still adhere to the "hardware comprehensive net profit margin does not exceed 5%" standard.
The editor really has hope of going to heaven, although he hasn’t figured out what to do.
